Ha ha - primitive Islamic religionists!! Only we are exactly the same, but are blind to our failings. This narrative plays on our conceited, flabby, unreasoned thinking. But its nice to laugh to others, eh?
Science to me, is the application of the scientific method. This is to say that whatever is being looked at should be repeatable, and consistently provide the same results. Strictly speaking, when we say we know, we should be saying that because we have applied the scientific method personally.
The reality is that science in 'the West' does not provide us the knowledge we think it does. The use of the pronoun 'we' cuts to the chase of the problem - WE assume that our scientists have this. But step back and think about what it is to know - it can't be a case of trusting scientists. I should be able to take whatever is being proposed or claimed and verify it personally.
But no one - NO ONE - is verifying anything personally. No one is testing the claims. We all live in our silos, trusting that others are working in good faith. Trusting that the stories we are told are not just hearsay. We trust the results we are provided, without any verification. We trust that what we are provided are not stories, but are actual verifiable science.
My point is that no one is personally verifying science. On an individual level we cannot be sure that these are not stories and hearsay.
With the virus, has anyone here ever used an electron microscope? Did you see a virus with it? Why do you think it is a virus? Etc etc. The truth is our reason is actually faith too!
Science, as we do it, ie based on trust and without personal verification, is absolutely equivalent to religion. A comforting, explanatory story is provided and we believe we 'know' what is happening. Scientists are our priests and we take their pronouncements as gospel, without questioning them.
You have a fair point^, but instead of attacking science in particular you should attack societies in general. Can you trust the food you buy at the supermarket or at the restaurant is not poisonous? That your doctor or partner isn't going to kill you in your sleep? That policemen will not shoot you? That drivers won't run you over?
It's not about science. Society is impossible without trust.
^ except that scientists do check each other's work and occasionally find mistakes. Scientific progress is real and has provided concrete and undeniable improvements to people's lives, and this should give credibility to science as a whole. But I see your point, outsiders cannot understand nor verify science without the proper training and equipment.
The problem more widely, is that we trust others. Bear with me - I know this sounds bad. The fact is that we trust too much. We should be verifying all the claims that are made to us. We would soon learn discernment over what sources are trustworthy (friend's personal experiences - ie anecdotal evidence) versus evidence presented by those that govern us on the media (politicians + their megaphone the mainstream media).
This in itself is jarring - we know politicians are not trustworthy, but we think they are trying to do their best. But really what we have is a dog and pony show to distract us, and the governance is going on anyway.
The answer, in my opinion, is something like stepping up individually. We should test and present our results to those around. We would soon learn the difference between knowing and believing. And we would also learn to accept that we do not know - and that that's ok. If we don't know, that doesn't mean we have to accept any old story that's presented. We can defer acceptance as and when we have the data, without kidding ourselves. This is skepticism.
> We would soon learn the difference between knowing and believing.
Well said, and it's not always so easy. Skepticism and critical thinking are in very short supply, that is true, and we should all try to verify as much as possible.
But really, most things cannot be verified by you, personally. We do stand on the shoulders of giants, and you will not be able to verify centuries of scientific progress all on your own, from first principles.
And this becomes even harder when you approach the softer parts of human knowledge such as economics or very recent discoveries that aren't fully settled. Most people are easily tricked by politicians and other evil actors simply because most things cannot be known for sure (immigration? interest rates? carbon taxes?), and the best one can do is to have educated guesses. And educated guess require education, which most have not.
So I don't see how you can live without trusting most of what you are said or living partially outside society. I guess a compromise between our point of views is the good old adage "trust, but verify".
> But really, most things cannot be verified by you, personally. We do stand on the shoulders of giants, and you will not be able to verify centuries of scientific progress all on your own, from first principles.
Absolutely. You cannot verify everything. One should try though, at least where possible. Of course we cannot verify everything. We should also get used to saying 'I don't know' rather than presenting hearsay as truth.
When one has not verified a thing, one should be open about the level of knowledge we have. It is absolutely acceptable not to know everything. It is not acceptable to carelessly relay what might be lies.
I don't agree that we stand on the shoulders of giants. I don't have any heroes. I stand by own judgement alone.
The way I see it, if we don't verify a thing, we should not accept it. We simply say we don't know, that we are working on a hypothesis. We should explicitly state our assumptions and gratefully receive correction. We can say that 'such and such is the common consensus but that I have not proven this to myself'. We should let a modicum of doubt be expressed in what we say, if there is a modicum of doubt in what we are stating.
You can even consider this from a spiritual perspective. If you erroneously believe something to be true, but in fact it is a lie, but you repeat it, are you a liar too? Are you stating a case that you shouldn't be stating? I think so. I think not living and breathing truth, you are relaying unverified hearsay. I think is in fact lying. It is careless use of language, and misleads the next person as you were misled yourself.
I love to recommend this video, that I think accurately expresses the problem we have in trying to determine truth:
>The way I see it, if we don't verify a thing, we should not accept it. We simply say we don't know, that we are working on a hypothesis. We should explicitly state our assumptions and gratefully receive correction. We can say that 'such and such is the common consensus but that I have not proven this to myself'. We should let a modicum of doubt be expressed in what we say, if there is a modicum of doubt in what we are stating.
While I appreciate your point of view and, especially in terms of policy and governance, it's a good idea to at least try to verify the veracity of the claims made by those seeking to implement policy, I think you go too far in dumping science and mathematics into that bucket.
For example, do you find it necessary to prove the commutative property of addition, or the existence of rational numbers before you can compute the sales tax due on a purchase?
Do you need to prove General Relativity (one of the most precise theories we've ever come up with) in order to trust your GPS?
You can "verify" this by punching in an address in your phone's directions app and use the GPS receiver to confirm your location as you move. When you arrive at your destination, you'll find that you're within a few meters of where you wanted to go.
That's only possible for GPS because the clocks on GPS devices and the satellites providing GPS signals are synchronized pretty precisely.
Without General Relativity providing a framework for accurately measuring time for objects with vastly different velocities, this would be impossible.
Or Quantum Mechanics, whose predictions have been shown to be more precise than any other scientific theory ever developed.
If we were to take your advice and distrust those theories because we can't personally verify them (whether that be a lack of mathematical knowledge or a lack of equipment and methodologies to do so), then we should reject the idea that GPS devices can give is accurate directions and claim that lasers (or any sort of coherent EM emissions) don't exist.
Which is objectively false.
It's a good idea to question what others assert, but (as another poster put it), having to prove everything from first principles before accepting its validity is a huge waste of time and effort.
That's where critical thinking, assessment of sources and the application of Occam's (and Hanlon's) razor really shines.
I completely agree that we shouldn't trust everything we hear, read or even see.
At the same time, rejecting everything we can't personally verify seems both counterproductive and deeply destructive of our science, our technology and our societies.
I like your approach. You are stating what personally meets your criteria. You are mis-stating my position though.
I'm stating an absolute position - that you don't know a thing until you have proved it to yourself. Its kind of self evident. Its so self-evident that people think they know it. But they don't realise that watching something in a video or on TV is not evidence. Its the illusion of evidence. It kids people into thinking they 'know', but the truth is that they have beliefs.
You are expressing a practical approach. This is interesting too - you want to get as much solid info for the effort. You are taking a pragmatic belief system approach to navigating reality. Your practical approach, doesn't need facts or truth. It is happy to have things that are useful or not - its about utility. At least this is proactive.
I'm stating a fact - that you don't know a thing, until you have verified it personally. Knowledge and what qualifies it as such to any individual - is a point that is missed by most. I'm stating something about truth and how we know it or not.
You also say:
"having to prove everything from first principles before accepting its validity is a huge waste of time and effort."
I agree. I'm not saying that you should do that. I'm saying that people need to recognise when they are believing something on the basis of no evidence that they misunderstand as evidence (ie seeing something on TV), and when they have verified something personally.
I'm fine to say, that I don't know. Many things. The shape of the earth. That viruses exist. I know there are theories (sphere, flat earth, viruses, microsomes) - but I'm not going to mis-represent the state of my knowledge. I simply don't know. I haven't been in space, I haven't verified it myself. I haven't seen a virus. I'm not going to pretend to have knowledge that I don't. I contrast this with others who say they 'know' when they are kidding themselves and others.
>you will not be able to verify centuries of scientific progress all on your own, from first principles. And this becomes even harder when you approach the softer parts of human knowledge such as economics
TBH most of economics is non-empirical ideology that's easy to debunk. More generally pseudo-science is rampant in "western science". That's another reason why this article is so ironic/islamophobic.
The author is critical of Islam, but that is hardly "islamophobic": at no point in the article does the author indicate any fear of Islam, which is what the "-phobic" construction means. "-phobic" does not mean "says negative things about" and especially does not mean "disagrees with", despite the way it's frequently used.
That kind of thing looks good on paper but fails miserably in reality. No individual has the bandwidth to verify everything themselves, and precious few have the numerical and statistical literacy to be able to even verify samples here and there and not get stuck in a local minimum. To me, this whole line of thinking sounds like the dorm-room libertarian bullshit that gets generated from the Dunning-Kruger effect on steroids, but I'm willing to be convinced I'm wrong.
In a perfect world, any random person would have the ability to independently verify any scientific claim they cared to. But as you imply, our world is far from perfect. Many scientific facts require heavy training and/or expensive equipment to verify that most people just don't have. But the cool thing is that IF you did have the skills and gear (and patience, free time, assistants, etc.), you absolutely can image a virus particle, or measure the mass of an electron (not all that complicated, it turns out!), or take your own observations of the motion of the planets and re-derive Kepler's laws of planetary motion.
> My point is that no one is personally verifying science. On an individual level we cannot be sure that these are not stories and hearsay.
You should hang out with more scientists. It turns out they count as "someone"!
> Science, as we do it, ie based on trust and without personal verification, is absolutely equivalent to religion. A comforting, explanatory story is provided and we believe we 'know' what is happening. Scientists are our priests and we take their pronouncements as gospel, without questioning them.
This is a grossly false equivalency. The thing with any scientific claim is that you could independently verify it; in practice, verifying modern scientific claims tends to cost tons of time and money, but nothing in principle prevents you.
"A 2016 poll of 1,500 scientists reported that 70% of them had failed to reproduce at least one other scientist's experiment (50% had failed to reproduce one of their own experiments). In 2009, 2% of scientists admitted to falsifying studies at least once and 14% admitted to personally knowing someone who did. Misconducts were reported more frequently by medical researchers than others."
Its not a joke.
Also, there is the question of funding in science. The government, the military and private corporations basically provide all the funding.
Do you think they fund things that are not in their interests? That good food would be more effective than medicine? Stuff like that?
If they fund a study that produces data that is contrary to the general narrative, do you think that will be published?
Do you think they will fund those studies that are against their narrative?
I love science, and the scientific method. But, not the science we have. It really is akin to religion - both are means of governance of the masses by controlling what is acceptable to think about.
The replication crisis is only possible precisely because scientific claims are by definition falsifiable. What's the religious equivalent of the replication crisis? Holy wars?
The replication crisis is an alarming and embarrassing problem, driven largely by the slavish "publish or perish" incentive structure. But I don't think this relates to your original claim that "no one - NO ONE - is verifying anything personally. No one is testing the claims." It's through exactly those attempts at verification and testing that scientists are realizing that standards of statistics, transparency, and integrity are not good enough.
> I love science, and the scientific method. But, not the science we have. It really is akin to religion - both are means of governance of the masses by controlling what is acceptable to think about.
Science is inextricably linked to politics and society, as you rightly point out. Good science indeed can and should guide policy and governance, but calling that "controlling what is acceptable to think about" is wildly pessimistic.
Your argument has evolved into "scientists and science is imperfect due to various sources of bias." That's true, but I disagree that this makes science "absolutely equivalent to religion."
This is flat out not true, every child that studies science in high school, all the way through to degree level in University personally goes through all the logical chains of thought, experimentation and verification of the ideas and principles they learn. We read how Newton derived the laws of motion and measure the periods of swinging weights hanging on strings, we measure the pressure of a gas as it varies with changing temperature. I have personally measured the speed of light in a lab to within a few percent using a set of lasers and worked through the derivation of the relativistic equations. All of this is in the physics text books for anyone to learn and personally verify.
Science education very much rests on teaching and learning scientific methods and showing students how to prove the things they are learning.
I did give examples. My own children are going through high school here in the UK right now, they are 15 and 17 and both study physics and chemistry. They spend a significant portion of their science education performing experiments themselves in labs, that's exactly what lab work is for - to test the things you are being taught. Maybe it's different in the US, if you are American, but did you really not do experiments in science class at school? Did your teachers really not explain how to apply the scientific method practically? Anyone can test the theories of basic mechanics, gases and electricity with household objects and surely must do this at school right?
I happened to go on to do Physics at University, although I transferred and eventually graduated in Computer Science. Of course the work you do there is more advanced, but it builds on the basic principles of investigation, verification and experimentation started at school. About 95,000 students study physical science subjects University level here in the UK every year.
I'm in USA northeast, and we did experiments in (private) highschool & college around chemistry (calories burned, mole weights, etc) and physics (measure a spring's K, speed, light/sound wave refractions, surface tension of water+soap, etc). Not so much in biology but I think I would've hated that kind of wetwork.
You had to perform and write up a practical experiment for the A-Level Physics final exam in the 1980s - I remember it fondly because a friend accidentally set his on fire to everyone’s suppressed amusement!
This is a narrow view of science. If they're taking one or two courses on physical science, what are their other classes? Do they examine the hypotheses and evidence in economics, history, etc.? Or is their course load just 10% physical science and 90% indoctrination?
I verified a _lot_ at school. Simple stuff, sure, but it's the method which matters, not the thing you verify. I guess it may depend on the education systems, but seeing it as an 'indoctrination system' is just dishonest, given that by _definition_ you want to change the minds of the children. There is no --or so little-- spontaneous learning when you reach something more complicated than the basic action/immediate consequence a toddler uses.
To all those that are telling me how much verification is going on, I want to offer this very simple and basic question.
How was water proven to you to be made up of 2 gases?
Please don't refer me to youtube videos where a showman's pop is made, and we see some water droplets from the air condensate on the bottle. I want to see 2 gases being added together and making a liquid, that is water. We are apparently on a planet that is mainly water... surely this isn't too much to ask?
You might think this is basic, and it is. If you review this information, you will recognise just how little you actually know.
It isn't much to ask at all, but what you describe makes little sense.
1) What's the issue with "showman pop and some water droplets"? What's the difference between producing 1 mL or 1 gallon of water in terms of _verification_?
2) You can verify it in various ways, including obtaining back oxygen and hydrogen from water. You can measure the weight of the water you've used (and derive the number of molecules), and the weight of the gases you obtain (and again check that it matches what you've provided).
3) Sure, your sensors (eyes, ears, etc.) are not accurate/fast enough to literally see two H2 molecules and one O2 molecule creating two H2O. If you feel that this in itself is enough to impede verification then we have an issue. You can always go back to a point where your eyes are enough to validate an hypothesis and build from there, so everything holds. But you seem to be asking that for _every_ scientific proof in our modern world, which is just mischievous.
It is extremely simple to do that. But you won't accept it. You would say the gas canister containing oxygen to be "unproved", or the ignition source to be "unproved to be so", or the camera to be "unproved to truly reflect the reality", or the container in which the gases are put in "unproved to be empty".
You do not really care about knowing, you care about being right. And there's nothing I can do for you on this regard.
Seriously, post a video of you doing that. Or someone else's.
If you think I will refute it whatever the case, what can I do? I can only say that I will watch in good faith.
If, as you seem to suggest, I do see issues with the video and evidence, and you don't, what does that tell you about your threshold for the acceptance of what is presented as true to you?
> If, as you seem to suggest, I do see issues with the video and evidence, and you don't, what does that tell you about your threshold for the acceptance of what is presented as true to you?
Of course my threshold of acceptance is lower than yours! This whole discussion, my point was that your "threshold of acceptance" is ridiculously, insanely high.
For instance, I do think that the BBC guy in this video is acting in good faith. Also, given the two following hypothesis:
- Thousands of people around the globe have been putting up complex magic tricks and keep the secret for more than two centuries to make me believe that a gas can burn an produce water;
- Hydrogen and oxygen mixed together and ignited produce water vapor.
The latter is far, far more likely than the former.
Issues I have with the video you provided. I can't believe that this passes muster with you as a scientist.
I can't help but notice the gas he creates at first is white in colour. In the second the gas is clear in colour. Both white and colourless gas are the same apparently. The difference in colour is not explained.
In the second experiment, Brian Cox says he is using hydrogen + AIR (not oxygen). Air is apparently 78% nitrogen, 21% oxygen, and argon + trace gases are the rest. This is to say, this is not mixing oxygen + hydrogen. So this experiment is NOT what I was asking evidence of.
Finally, he creates an explosive pop and some condensation appears on the glass jar. Let's accept that this liquid is water. What's to say that the water isn't simply water that was already in vapour form in the air that condensed against the glass?
And why do we need flame to ignite the gases? Is it really true that fire creates water? Is that a joke?
And do we really think that the ratio of 2 particle of hydrogen to 1 of oxygen was met? It was hardly a rigorous measurement, was it?
Overall, no, I did not see and experiment where pure hydrogen and pure oxygen where combined to make water. Do you think you did? To me, its all inference, hearsay and claim.
If this is all the evidence you need, yes, I think your threshold is too low.
Losing the argument sucks right? Guess you'll have to get use to it. I know I'm right while you do not know, so you're wrong.
It's hard to argue against pure logic like mine... Maybe one day you'll understand.
I recall doing an experiment in high school where I added a drop of HCl to water and then applied an electric current to the water in the vessel - there were two vents and applying a flame to one of the areas near the bubbling electrodes resulted in a clean flame pop, a signature of hydrogen. Edit0: syntax corrections.
Are you deliberately missing the point? You follow a logical chain of building up a roughly coherent view of the world. Not as good as following the kind of thorough reasoning that goes into a research paper (since you always have access to "the right answer") but better than most alternatives that can be mass-produced at that level.
I don't agree with your final conclusion, but I upvoted this regardless, because I think it is an interesting perspective that is worthwhile to philosophize on.
If the Covid-19 situation taught me anything, it would be that it's apparently very, very easy to convince the vast majority of the population they need behave, think and feel in some way, based on 'facts' and figures that are unproven, incomplete, out-of-context, or based on 'science' that is not or only barely amenable to empirical verification. We (the world) are doing so many things at once now to try to handle the pandemic, but my impression of all of it, is that we really have no idea what we are doing, what works and what doesn't, why things seem to be out of control, and (controversially) how bad it actually is in the grand scheme of things.
IMO science is most definitely not comparable to religion, but I will concede that -for most people- its role in their lives is very similar.
If the Covid-19 situation taught me anything, it would be that it's apparently very, very easy to convince the vast majority of the population they need behave, think and feel in some way, based on 'facts' and figures that are unproven, incomplete, out-of-context, or based on 'science' that is not or only barely amenable to empirical verification.
That's not the impression I've got watching it all unfold in the UK. Sure there were a few charlatans at the extremes but the bulk of the messaging has been open about the fact there is a lot we don't know.
Thank you. I always get heavily downvoted as I don't think others are as open minded to hearing a different viewpoint as you.
I agree too. But, I see science as an individual's pursuit. I really mean it when I say that science is something one should verify personally. Whenever you don't do that, you are accepting a story - without testing you cannot know anything, it is all in the realm of belief.
And you are right that most belief whether it is science/magic/religion its all the same thing. They want to naively trust and have faith. It would be endearing if it wasn't also susceptible to meaning that they can be lead as a herd. As an individual, it is very hard to stand against the herd. Whether that is avoiding being drowned as a witch, or being forced to vaccinate oneself for the good of the herd.
Be careful in bringing up "open mindedness". If the most compelling thing you can say about your position is that "it is so weird and obtuse that only true open minds will not reject it", I'm not sure you're making a point here...
> But, I see science as an individual's pursuit. I really mean it when I say that science is something one should verify personally.
Sure. But you can't. You literally can't. And since you can't, it means, given this sentence, that you consider all science to be in the realm of belief. This is really sad.
> Whenever you don't do that, you are accepting a story - without testing you cannot know anything, it is all in the realm of belief.
Surely it is possible, and costs nothing, to listen to another point of view. Surely testing what you know against a contrary opinion can only be a positive experience.
> > But, I see science as an individual's pursuit. I really mean it when I say that science is something one should verify personally.
> Sure. But you can't. You literally can't. And since you can't, it means, given this sentence, that you consider all science to be in the realm of belief. This is really sad.
Yes, but when you haven't verified, you can't say you know. You literally can't. You believe.
> Surely testing what you know against a contrary opinion can only be a positive experience.
Trivial counterexample: if I repeat "you are an [insert your favorite insult here], what you say is false" again and again, which can be considered a "contrary opinion", you will not have a positive experience.
> Yes, but when you haven't verified, you can't say you know. You literally can't. You believe.
How are you sure that your senses provide you with an accurate representation of the world? You can't. So you believe they do. And you thus know nothing at all. See how easy it is to come up with these broad judgments which, while interesting from a philosophical point of view, are totally useless in practice?
That's my point: I have no issue discussing cartesian doubt, for example. But this does not imply at all the science to be invalid, wrong, or the same as a religion: that's the pitfall you're in.
> How are you sure that your senses provide you with an accurate representation of the world?
I agree - you don't even know that your senses are providing you with an accurate representation of the world. But, if I say 'this is a table' you can come and check the truth of it. In the objective world, I can confirm a thing and say 'I know'. I can tell you how I found out, and you can check the veracity of my statement.
If, say, I have a box, and I say 'inside the box is a potato', in the context of what we are talking about you have a couple of options. You can check (verify) whether that's true. Or you can accept it as true without checking.
I'm saying, everyone - EVERYONE - is accepting claims all day long, without any proof. No one is checking.
And this has become the basis of people's reality. A consensus group think determined by what is presented on a screen.
> I'm saying, everyone - EVERYONE - is accepting claims all day long, without any proof.
You included. But saying "no one is checking" is false. For every claim, there are people who do, actually, check. But you ask for _everyone_ to check _every claim_, which, I repeat myself, is, plainly put, impossible. So either you still do not accept that this is impossible, and going further in the discussion without this axiom is just useless, or you accept that this is impossible yet you still hypocritically ask for it. In either case, I do not have much to add.
I'm saying people are relaying information as if it was true and that they had verified it, when they haven't. Its hearsay, gossip. Or even, lying.
I don't say check every case. That's impossible.
I'm saying be a bit clearer about what you know and what you believe. Don't say 'I know' when you haven't verified whatever it is. To say you do, is in fact, a type of lie. You are simply re-stating what you have been told was true. The effect is that you may deceive others. Why should they be deceived because your threshold is to trust whatever is being presented to you as true? You don't know, but you say you do.
If you like, I can deconstruct this a little more. It hinges on the verb 'to be', 'is'.
Contrast these statements:
"The earth is a sphere".
"The evidence that I have seen indicates that the earth is a sphere".
The first statement is not verifiable personally. It is parroting a line, and is a very common linguistic shortcut. The effect is a form of lie, where you are overstating the case of what you know.
The second statement far more accurately reflects what I at least know.
Sure, prepend all your sentences by "The evidence that I have seen indicates" if it makes you happy. It changes nothing about the fact that knowledge exists even if you can personally experience it using solely your senses. I know that we've been to the Moon (do you?) although I wasn't even born when this happened.
Knowledge is certain. If there is a possibility that some claim could be wrong, it is only a hypothesis. And that's perfectly fine. Call that knowledge if you like, but you are over-stating your case. Lying in fact.
The reality is that we have far less knowledge than we think. We may be aware of lots of hypotheses, we can have knowledge of hypotheses. But this is not knowledge of the thing being hypothesised about.
You think you have knowledge when you don't. And I say, if you are unaware of your ignorance, and in fact erroneously believe yourself to be knowledgeable, you are in a state worse than ignorance. You only have beliefs, but you think they are knowledge. This is to say, you are guilty of magical thinking. And that is the essence of religion.
Hence why I say, religion and science are the same thing at core - its all belief. Adherents to each believe they have knowledge, but this belief is without proof. In a way scientists are worse as they are convinced they do have the truth, and are determined to righteously inflict their truths on everyone else! They are far from humble. Its pretty irritating!
Science and religion are belief systems and therefore share some commonalities but the radical difference is that science is based on testable hypothesis, whereas religion is just religion.
To say they are "absolutely equivalent" is a massive stretch.
Worth pointing out that there was an important caveat that the GP included... "Science... BASED ON TRUST AND WITHOUT PERSONAL VERIFICATION is absolutely equivalent to religion."
People don't trust science at random just because a book says trust science.
They trust science because they drive in a car, can video chat across the world, can play games with their friends on a screen, have devices that cook for them, automatically clean for them, etc.
You don't need to verify quantum theory to understand that you have a computer in front of you.
I think you're confusing "trust" with "belief". Trust (and reputation) is the foundation of human society and doesn't have to be related to religion. You get on a plane based on trust in the science and engineering that makes them fly, not because you personally verified every single component. Personal verification simply doesn't scale.
There is a big difference between something being able to be tested to see if it is actually true and something that is impossible to test.
Want to understand and test the veracity of some theories on electricity, gravity, medicine, etc, you can ! And a lot of those can be even tested at home with simple experiment. You can sometimes even find something new, or that one theory is wrong.
Want to test if god exists ? If heaven or hell exists ? If following some rules will grant you access to heaven ? You can't. There is no experiment that you can replicate that will prove any of those claims. You can try to find your own, in many way is is also scientific, but there is many religions and people have been trying to prove many of those theories for eons without any advancement.
Comparing science and the belief in scientific theories as similar to a religious faith is just wrong if you stop and think about it for more than 5 minutes.
Like any student, I did basic chemistry and physics and we tested various claims in the lab.
Nobody personally tests all claims, even professional scientists have to accept some prior claims until they have some reason to believe they're incorrect.
Trust is necessary for science to extend beyond the efforts of an individual, but trust isn't the same thing as faith.
> has anyone here ever used an electron microscope?
I am not a scientist, but yes. It’s not that hard to directly access most scientific tools. Verification takes effort, but random verification should reasonably give you confidence and can be a fun project on it’s own. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EVbdbVhzcM4
You really cannot trust what is presented on a screen. There really is no equivalent to personally testing science or any thesis personally. You will be illuminated, rather than falsely believing you 'know', when all you know is a story.
That is an example of an experiment. If that experiment reveals some truth then it should be repeatable. If it isn't repeatable it isn't going to be considered always true and has no particular value. Videos like this are made all the time for marketing, media, entertainment purposes. Anti-science propagandists make videos like this all the time - but they aren't accepted because they aren't typically repeatable or filled with flaws.
We trust the process because the process bears fruit - computers, cars, power, electricity, cell phones, cures of disease, antibiotics, etc. We experience all of these things daily. Now black holes and hawking radiation? Perhaps these things are a bit harder and require leaps of faith - but that is reality in a specialized modern society.
You trust the car mechanic to know what's wrong, although sometimes you encounter a fraud who will lie to make more money. That doesn't make all mechanics bad.
That video is making the false claim that individual aspects of a video can’t be independently falsified. A simple example is to track down the original referenced paper. Another is knowing that at the time the video was created, VFX wasn’t good enough to fake the shot. That’s not verification of say the amount of effort involved, as they could be scamming their backers or whatnot. But, it does demonstrate the difference between being skeptical and a conspiracy theorist.
A skeptic looks for individual evidence to support every independent assertion, where a conspiracy theory is based on the assumption that individual truths are linked. Using multiple different takes to make a video is independent of the accuracy of the experiment. A trained crow would be able to fake what a crow learning to solve a puzzle does.
With all respect, I think you missed the point. I am talking about how information is presented to us, and how we are put in a position of having to accept whatever is presented despite not being presented any evidence. This is not a conspiracy, it is logic.
The video is saying that information is presented to us in such a way that it is impossible to know whether it is true or false. When you edit the shots and do not present a single continuous shot, you have disabled the audience's ability to discern for themselves. And even if we were presented with an uncut edit, with CGI technology being as good as it is, we still cannot be sure nowadays.
The effect of being presented with endless streams of information like this, throughout our lives, in school and on TV, is that our ability to be clear about what we know is overwhelmed. And our nature is that we accept it all. We have been trained to sit back and accept whatever we are told. What's irritating to me is that we also have the front to call that 'knowledge'. When we see something like the crow 'science' in that film, we think we know. But we do not. We have the illusion of knowledge, but in reality we are in the dark. Without the deconstruction of that film, I think most would watch this and accept this as true.
This is a state worse than ignorance. At least an ignorant person knows they do not 'know'. Thinking you 'know' when you do not, is actually negative knowledge - its worse than ignorance.
When you reflect on this, you will see that this the default means of receiving information. We sit back and let the news/the scientists/whoever make a bunch of claims. And most will accept all these by default. Simply because its on TV! And everyone thinks they are cleverer that that... whilst having verified nothing!
> with CGI technology being as good as it is, we still cannot be sure nowadays.
CGI is still extremely limited. There is an ever expanding list of things that can be reasonably faked, but high definition turbulent flows for example are not one of them.
Now you personally may simply not know where that line is, but that doesn’t mean nobody does. Which is my point, your personal level of ignorance isn’t universal. Science is still surprisingly accessible, learning and verifying say thermodynamics can give you more confidence about say global warming than simple blind trust.
The same is true of a great many spurious claims from say kickstarts that can’t work as advertised. Which means a slick video on it’s own isn’t enough.
PS: I don’t mean for this as a personal attack, more a suggestion that if you find separating fact from fiction difficult there is a path forward.
You are engaging with my argument - it is not a personal attack, and I don't take it that way.
You say I'm ignorant. My response is that you are over-stating the level of your knowledge.
Do you really know what is possible with CGI? You may be an expert in the field, but can you really say that? Is it possible that the military, google, the Russians, or someone else, has an advance on what you believe to be the cutting edge?
The problem as I see it is that for most people a slick video IS enough. To accept all sorts of things that they have no evidence for. And they say 'they know' and that 'its true'.
I agree that for many people a slick video is enough. I personally devoted a significant chunk of my life to avoid that which simply isn’t tenable for most people. Still looking into the mechanics of say DNA deep doing to encounter chromatin means you can start to reason about what’s actually happening. Keep building a slightly more than superficial understanding of everything from Architecture to Quantum Mechanics and eventually you run out of major fields of study. It’s far from comprehensive and you really need to focus after that, but it’s something.
So sure, I don’t know the exact CGI line, but it’s something I know quite a lot about. Could a ‘deep fake’ style video effectively be good enough to be indistinguishable from someone actually talking? I suspect not yet, but I wouldn’t want to take the bet. But I know enough to realize the specifics around chaotic fluid simulation is a vastly higher hurdle due to the underlying computation involved.
Granted, drawing that line requires an understanding of what Military’s can pull off, which ultimately comes down to physics and economics. Now, I have actually done R&D for them so take of this what you will. It used to be military hardware had a huge leg up, but that’s far less the case today.
Getting to the point where you hear someone say “salt used to be worth as much as gold” and you think “that’s got to be BS” doesn’t take a deep understanding of history, just a supernatural understanding of a few related topics.
'no-one' verifying is too steep. Many people test many results from science all the time. I've personally followed and tested many papers because their claimed results were useful to me. Sometimes they aren't correct, or at least I am not able to verify them as such. More fundamental ideas are put to the test every time I design something, and they have held very strong in my experience. Equivocating religion with science by raising your standards so high they are impossible to meet in practice is disingenious, especially when one stands up to far more testing than the other. I agree that we need more critical thinking in this world, especially from the general public, but when you retreat to deciding nothing is verified because you have not seen or understood it directly and personally, you retreat in another direction which is just as useless and potentially harmful.
Thank you for your comment. Although you think you are arguing against me, I think you are supporting my point.
When you design and it works - that is what I am calling applying the scientific method personally. When you test other's papers you should have a 100% confirmation rate, unless you are making an error in methodology. It seem to me that you did not find that.
I'm not raising my standards high. When I have not personally verified something, I would say - that I haven't verified something. I just wouldn't say 'I know'. This a statement of reality - it is not a standards thing. There is no faith involved.
But most people, it seems to me, would take it all on trust and step out to say 'they know'. I would say their standard are too low. That they are acting on faith - they are believers.
That's the kind of argument that could make sense in a vacuum, but does not apply at all in practice.
Sure, _in theory_, I would be glad to know enough, to have enough time and to have enough money to verify every scientific theory since the dawn of times. In practice, it's been totally not scalable for a single person for about 500 years. _Careful trust_, with verification systems in place, is then the second best choice we can make.
The difference with religion lies in the fact that you do _not_ have to blindly accept everything. If you doubt a specific scientific theory, then by all means, put it to the test! But no, you won't be able to do that for science as a whole, not because "we're whining children who like conformting stories" but simply because of the blunt fact that our time here is limited.
This makes the mistake that science is there to be verified. It's not. It's there to be falsified.
We don't require verification of science above and beyond its contribution to our ability to predict and control the world. As the famous slightly cliched saying goes: all models are wrong, some models are useful.
There are some people who think that the point of science is to move us closer to truth. Some of those people are actual scientists, most of them are not.
When you test, and in one case you find something different to what is presented, what do you do?
Do you, blame yourself? Accept that everything else is true? Accept that nothing else is true?
My position is that I am happy to continue as before, but I won't overstate my case. I won't say 'I know' when I don't. I can accept that what is presented as true, may in fact be true, but I don't know it. I would be lying if I did.
So, when you say viruses, or atoms, or whatever exist, but you have not personally verified that, you should be clear that you do not know. You may think such-and-such is the case, but if you state something without personal verification, you run the risk of repeating a lie, and misleading the next person.
> When you test, and in one case you find something different to what is presented, what do you do?
First, you check for external factors which may have affect the test. If you can confirm you cannot reproduce past results, you may consider discussing with other people about your findings, and publishing if no one can find a reasonable explanation. In any case, you are happy because that's how science progresses.
> My position is that I am happy to continue as before, but I won't overstate my case. I won't say 'I know' when I don't. I can accept that what is presented as true, may in fact be true, but I don't know it. I would be lying if I did.
Sure, and that's the point of science: there is no truth, only better and better models. But we won't stop using the verb "to know" altogether.
Knowledge is not a binary thing (you know or you don't).
We sent Voyager probes through the solar system using Newton laws, although we know that general relativity is more accurate.
Knowledge is a spectrum. If you think that anything has a definitive answer, then I don't know what you are doing, but it is not science.
I did this myself. I took a very long ladder and went in space with the Voyager probes, then threw them very hard out of the solar system. That was quite fun actually.
Many people consider science like a religion. For example, many people don't understand evolution, they think some magic force gradually turned fishes into humans. No wonder it is sometimes put on the same level as creationism. But to be honest, it doesn't really matter. If you are not a scientist, faith is a shortcut that allows you to focus more on what matters more to you.
The difference is that you don't need faith. With enough motivation, you can probably get to see the virus on an election microscope. It is difficult. Just operating an election microscope is an art, and getting the necessary security clearances to work with deadly pathogens can be tricky. Almost no one does it, but sometimes, a crazy enough guy spends way too much time challenging a well established theory. Most of the times, the results are the same as what mainstream science says, but there are a few exceptions. This random poking keeps science in check.
The current pandemic is good at exposing the "non-faith" aspects of science. Covid is not airborne, ah, maybe it is, hydroxychloroquine works, no it doesn't, case fatality rate is 5%, no, 0.5%, no, 1%, it attacks the lungs, the nose, you keep immunity for a long time, no you don't, yes you do, etc... It is constantly changing, and this is science at work. A priest will not change his mind, he will not receive a new revision of the Bible every week. That rarely shown aspect is a bit unsettling to those with a faith-based view of science, but totally normal for those who are practicing.
Modern academia has its problems. We often talk about the "reproducibility crisis", but the simple fact it is widely recognized as a problem sets it apart from religion.
And BTW, while I am an atheist myself, I am not against religion. Religion offers stability and answers that science is unable to provide, and both can coexist.
One of the issues with teaching evolution is the brain-dead treatment that it has in films and television.
No, if you start with cellular life you will not get to humans every time. You can't even be sure you will get to fish or other animals with internal skeletons.
So many random things can be different at each step of the chain and there are so many steps, millions of them.
Have you seen evolution? What proved evolution to you personally?
I would expect that you were presented with Darwin and evolution at school and accepted. With no verification. You were propagandised. Just like creationists.
"With the virus, has anyone here ever used an electron microscope? Did you see a virus with it? Why do you think it is a virus? Etc etc - its all on faith."
> But no one - NO ONE - is verifying anything personally. No one is testing the claims. My point is that no one is personally verifying science
Each science article is extensively reviewed. First when you need to force yourself to read previous articles in the same field. Second by your boss and other members in the team. Third time by a peers system, and is not easy at all to pass. Sometimes must be corrected two or three times more. Often is rejected and sent to other journal, that will require the same process. Journals can ask for your laboratory notes and raw data and repeat the calculus by themselves. Is not unusual.
After an article is published anybody can point to something found incorrect on it.
So the truth is that science, the real science, is extensively reviewed. There are groups specially prone to fraud, and many articles are garbage, but are most the exception than the norm.
Or they are, they may just not be aware of it - the fact that billions of people have had MMR vaccines and we, as a species, have nearly eradicated the measles, mumps, and rubella in a great scientific experiment is downright awe inspiring. This is nothing like a religion and this type of backwards thinking is what holds us, as a species back. And, either way, it doesn’t matter - every scientific practice does not need to be repeated down to the minutia by every human being to be effective. I imagine most people taking HIV/AIDs suppressants have never looked through an electron microscope to verify exactly how they work, but that has nothing to do with anything.
Your analogy is, frankly, awful and way off the mark.
Edit, to add an example: a patient listening to a doctor who has set many broken bones about how the doctor is going to set that particular patient’s bones is nothing like a religious adherent listening to a priest who has never spoken to god about what god says and expects of the adherent... that’s just absurd.
Except science is not static like religion, it changes with new discoveries and explanations.
And, at high school level, basic science is tested and experiments are repeated.
So at the very least, some people learn proper scientific thinking, while others just learn to repeat "facts".
In contrast, everything that religion is, is just memorization of some old ideas, and treating personal anecdotes and made up stories like they are statistically significant data.
As far as viruses are concerned: when washing your hands can keep diseases at bay, that's good enough for me.
Then you study DNA at school, you experiment a bit with drosophila, you read about Mendel and evolution, and it makes sense, doesn't it? It isn't faith, it well calculated trust.
> Science is absolutely equivalent to religion
And that's why we see people smitten by lightning every day.
> Science, as we do it, ie based on trust and without personal verification, is absolutely equivalent to religion.
We call it Social Constructionism. It's the basis of all knowledge in society. Whether a concept exists or whether it's believed to be true does not necessarily have anything connected to an objective reality, all you need is making it believable (different groups of people and different societies have different standards on what qualifies as believable). Demonstrating it by direct observation using the scientific method can achieve this goal, creating a mythology or writing a textbook can do it as well. At the end of the day, you must start from an existing concept and assume it is true. Theoretically, You can start from simple and self-evident concepts and derive everything from first principles. However, in a modern society, the existing body of knowledge is too large for any individual to independently verify and too useful to refuse. Even the verification of the simplest fact can be non-obvious and expensive. Thus, we assume they're true without verification. And often, what we have accepted are not even technically accurate.
Now, I'm not interested in discussing any particular issues in the thread, but I'd like to use this chance to talk about my pet theory on the psychology of conspiracy theories... An interesting thought exercise: Consider the shape of the Earth. Now, design a physics experiment to provide empirical evidence for a spherical Earth, preferably also it's rotation. Requirements: This should be practical within the ability of a single individual, and should be as easy as possible. Only minimum pre-existing concepts should be used. The result should be as obvious and unambiguous as possible without too much interpretation. It should be able to defend itself from any challenge on its technical inaccuracy or alternative models... I think it's actually a non-obvious problem. It's amazing how much domain-specific knowledge it requires. Flat Earth conspiracy theorists have cherry-picked numerous arguments to support their positions, just to name a few...
* Bedford Level Experiment. A number of sticks were placed in an 6-mile uninterrupted straight line. Optical observations were made. Experiment failed to detect any curvature, or that the data showed the curvature was not outward, but inward. Many modern versions by Flat Earthers can be found in YouTube videos, often on lakes or sea - objects and buildings well beyond the horizon can be seen by telescopic lens. Laser beams have been detected 15 kilometers apart, etc. Why? Atmospheric refraction. After atmospheric effects have been corrected, the data will definitely show that the Earth is indeed a sphere. But from now, to interpret the data, you suddenly need a model of atmospheric optics, which is far from obvious and requires many additional concepts. Then, consider the cost and difficulty of this naive experiment - For an individual, it's already high enough and unpractical for a city dweller. Thus, all optical experiments are doomed? Radio based observations are even trickier than optical observations.
* Foucault Pendulum. It's the most famous physics experiment to show the Earth's rotation, but the instability of the original, unpowered pendulum is notorious, even minor imperfection in mechanical construction or startup can create unwanted mode of oscillation, such as an elliptic oscillation which can totally mask the Earth's rotation. For powered pendulum, a careful and complicated mechanical analysis is needed to show that the pendulum has no preferred direction of swing,. Thus, Flat Earth advocates reject Foucault Pendulum as a valid experiment - any expected result is refuted as a coincidence or the result of the experimenter's biases.
* Gyroscope. An accurate and sensitive gyroscope, such as a Laser Ring Gyroscope, can sense the Earth's rotation. But gyroscope observations are rejected by Flat Earthers in general - the raw data output is noisy with random drifts and noise, aquisation of useful data heavily relies on algorithms and data processing. They argue that the algorithms can be biased to show a rotational Earth. Of course, it's not the case, but then you need to justify the entire subject of statistics and digital signal processing, good luck with that.
* Astronomic and Geodesic Measurements. Examples include observing the fixed stars and showing their variation in altitudes, or showing the sum of a triangle on Earth is greater than 180-degree, etc. Many of these experiments require an individual to travel great distances, many geodesic measurements also require accurate navigation, which can be disputed.
Of course, obvious experiments that produces strong evidences do exist, good candidates can be lunar ellipses, sun rise and sun set, timezones. But it's just a rhetorical question, I used the absurd example of Flat Earth to illustrate the point of non-obviousness of personal verification - indeed, many people who believe the Earth is a sphere have proposed these experiments to Flat Earthers, while making the mistake of not realizing their limitations, which in turns strengthens the beliefs of many Flat Earthers that "people are too brainwashed to see the truth". If we move away from Flat Earth and step into more advanced subjects, obviousness completely disappears, and only domain-specific knowledge remains, which are heavily dependent upon preexisting results.
In my opinion, it's how numerous conspiracy theories are created. The conspiracy theorists will simply tell you: why do you assume they're true? It's entirely possible that everything you know is false. And all the gaps in your accepted knowledge can be exploited by them to make this point. And ultimately, you may come to the conclusion that the entire body scientific knowledge is a hoax. Then, one may ask, how can people build anything in engineering? The conspiracy theorist will tell you, the truths are carefully and systematic distorted in a way that appears to be self-consistent, enough for some applications, but it's distorted enough to kill truth. And since any pre-existing results couldn't be trusted and one is unable to derive or verify anything from first principles due to limited time and resources, science is hence rejected.
Conclusion: The theoretical and epistemological foundation of many conspiracy theories are the equivalent of Reflection on Trusting Trust - they claim the vast majority of knowledge is manipulated for malicious purposes, in the same way that the hypothetical attack by Ken Thompson claims one's compiler could be backdoored and no program in one's computer can be trusted.
> We call it Social Constructionism. It's the basis of all knowledge in society.
I object already! Knowledge does not reside in society. A library cannot know, nor can a computer. Knowledge that state that a man or woman over something in the objective world and can be objectively confirmed. You and I can know. It is not a societal exercise.
You raise the flat earth. And you say:
"I used the absurd example of Flat Earth to illustrate the point of non-obviousness of personal verification"
Well, having given a bunch of detailed examples to show why it is not possible to prove a spherical earth, why do you call it an 'absurd' theory? How was the earth being a sphere proven to you? You are supporting my point that people believe they know but are in error. Belief has no part in knowledge.
I wouldn't object to you saying 'I believe the earth is spherical', or 'my hypothesis is that the earth is a sphere', or that 'a sphere is the best theory to explain the movement of the planets'. All good. But to say 'you know', when you were only taught and shown imagery on a TV - that's overstepping things!
Did you 'know' that the film 'Independence Day' was true too, seeing as you saw that on TV? Or did you know it was false, because someone told you it was fiction. Why are you happy to assume film images are false, but news images are true?
> I object already! Knowledge does not reside in society. [...] You and I can know. It is not a societal exercise.
Knowledge may or may not reside in society, but all practical effects and consequences of knowledge reside in society. A concept does not exist in an abstract and metaphysical world where you can go and find. And it's not possible to develop any concept, including scientific concepts, without social interactions. Thus, some (not all) Social Constructionists believe the process of scientific investigation is largely a societal exercise, and I don't find it's an unreasonable argument (I didn't say I agree, I say it's not unreasonable). For example, when one use the language of math to describe the physical phenomenon, some will represent it in terms of vectors, others will show it using complex numbers, or alternatively explaining it by a matrix. In practical, all are valid and useful, but their mental pictures are different. These concepts only exist in a society (an interesting article on this issue is Would Aliens Understand Lambda Calculus? [0]). Of course, if experimental physics is something to be accepted, it must explain observed phenomena and makes predictions. But how you exactly imagine the concept of "force" (or even this concept itself) and how you describe it in language depends on the history and culture of your society. Thus, I think it's fair to say that societal exercises are at least one part of any scientific investigations.
> Well, having given a bunch of detailed examples to show why it is not possible to prove a spherical earth, why do you call it an 'absurd' theory?
First, I didn't show it is impossible to prove a spherical Earth. I simply showed examples that some experiments are not as "obvious" as many have thought, and there exists practical problems. I also showed how these problems can be fixed and a spherical Earth can be demonstrated, by taking additional phenomena or concepts into accounts, which makes the experiment more difficult and non-obvious. But just because you cannot solve a problem for once doesn't mean the problem is impossible to solve. Speaking of atmospheric refraction, you can repeat the experiment in different time of the day, in different seasons, or try adjusting the heights of the objects, and you'll find strong evidences of atmospheric refraction, and how Flat Earth results are experimental errors.
> why do you call it an 'absurd' theory?
As I already mentioned in the original comment, arguments by Flat Earth advocates are 100% cherry-picked. They say the experiments are unable show a spherical Earth, not because they're serious experimenters, but that other experiments or additional concepts that would show a spherical Earth are intentionally ignored. For example, under some conditions, optical observations can show a spherical Earth, but it's not published by Flat Earthers. On the other hand, results show a flat Earth is published as a definite conclusion, and the concept of atmospheric refraction is rejected for being unnecessary and too complicated. However, if I use the same standard, I, too, can publish a single spherical Earth result and call it the definite conclusion, but this time, Flat Earthers will suddenly start rejecting my results on the basis of atmospheric refraction! Also, suggestions of improvement of the experiment that would clarify the problem will be intentionally ignored.
Society doesn't have knowledge. Libraries and universities do not have knowledge. Books do not have knowledge. Those are inanimate objects or concepts. They are not living men and women.
The only place knowledge resides in the minds of individual people.
In my view, you are making a category error to subsume your individual understanding, that no one else can access, into some concept called 'society'. There is no hive mind, no borg, no tangible collective consciousness. There are conceptual artefacts we all interact with, and all interpret in similar ways in our individual consciousness. We all know what a 'tree' is for example. These are common linguistic named 'tokens' that we use to interact with others. I say 'tree' and you understand me. But the concept of 'tree' only exists in our minds.
We discuss things in the objective world with others and that use concepts such as 'society' to describe part of that objective world. Our exchange of concepts does not make those concepts real in themselves. They are only real or animated in the mind of an individual - in you or I. They have no life of their own.
To treat 'society' as a real thing - as a sort of ultra-human - is to mistake the map for the terrain. On a map a group of people may be interpreted as a 'collection' or a 'society'. But that is just a concept to navigate the map at a certain resolution. The 'society' concept only resides in the mind of the individual looking at the map - its not actually a real thing. This can be confirmed as other individuals can use a different mental maps to successfully navigate the terrain - eg they may see a collection of individuals as a collection of individuals.
Science to me, is the application of the scientific method. This is to say that whatever is being looked at should be repeatable, and consistently provide the same results. Strictly speaking, when we say we know, we should be saying that because we have applied the scientific method personally.
The reality is that science in 'the West' does not provide us the knowledge we think it does. The use of the pronoun 'we' cuts to the chase of the problem - WE assume that our scientists have this. But step back and think about what it is to know - it can't be a case of trusting scientists. I should be able to take whatever is being proposed or claimed and verify it personally.
But no one - NO ONE - is verifying anything personally. No one is testing the claims. We all live in our silos, trusting that others are working in good faith. Trusting that the stories we are told are not just hearsay. We trust the results we are provided, without any verification. We trust that what we are provided are not stories, but are actual verifiable science.
My point is that no one is personally verifying science. On an individual level we cannot be sure that these are not stories and hearsay.
With the virus, has anyone here ever used an electron microscope? Did you see a virus with it? Why do you think it is a virus? Etc etc. The truth is our reason is actually faith too!
Science, as we do it, ie based on trust and without personal verification, is absolutely equivalent to religion. A comforting, explanatory story is provided and we believe we 'know' what is happening. Scientists are our priests and we take their pronouncements as gospel, without questioning them.